U.S. export control rules that would have set quotas for the supply of computing accelerators to different countries were supposed to go into effect next week, but the current Trump administration is preparing to radically modify them in order to simplify them and create conditions for “America’s dominance in AI.”
Image source: NVIDIA
At least, this is what the US Department of Commerce said in a statement cited by The Wall Street Journal. The previous version of the export control rules was approved under Biden, but was not supposed to come into force until May 15. Industry participants and US foreign trade partners had enough time to lobby their interests in this area, and Nvidia, which is extremely interested in the outcome of the initiative, also joined the process. “Biden’s AI rules are too complex, overly bureaucratic, and could stymie American innovation,” the US regulator said in a statement.
The news itself caused a rise in the share price of Nvidia, which is the main beneficiary in the process of exporting accelerators for artificial intelligence systems, by more than 3%. As is known, the ban on the supply of H20 accelerators to China will cost Nvidia $5.5 billion in losses in just one quarter of the current year, and by the end of the entire fiscal year, the damage should significantly exceed $10 billion. AMD estimated the damage from restrictions on the supply of Instinct MI308X computing accelerators to China at $1.5 billion in annual terms.
The Trump administration is expected to formulate modified export control rules within about two months, according to people familiar with the matter. U.S. lawmakers will have to figure out a way to limit access to computing accelerators by unfriendly countries without causing widespread harm to American tech companies.
Donald Trump is preparing for a trip to the Middle East, and Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which are facing restrictions in this area, are clearly interested in reviewing the export control system. Speaking about the possibility of easing the restrictions, the US President said: “We can do it, yes. And it will be announced soon.”
The approaching date of the introduction of the previous export restrictions has already caused a stir in the market for specialized components for artificial intelligence systems. The volume of exports of data processing equipment from Taiwan to Malaysia increased several times to $1.87 billion in March this year.
In addition to restrictions on the supply of computing accelerators and ready-made systems based on them, the Biden administration intended to introduce export controls on the software underlying modern large language models. Trump, however, was more inclined not to divide countries into groups into categories, but to individual conditions determined as a result of direct negotiations. This topic could have been used by Trump when discussing the size of import duties, as sources note.